Sunday, 16 April 2017

My greatest project, the one that is always ongoing, is my family.


There are so many amazing ways you can entertain and educate your children and I like to think that I'm pretty good with plucking fun activities out of the sky and embracing any crazy idea the boys come up with. It's important to motivate their creative side and I've found that having a couple of projects on the go is great for spending quality time together, It's great Father/Son bonding. We started building Seth a BMX last summer which has been great for teaching Seth the ins and outs of owning a bike. It's great riding about and having fun but it's just as fun to get to know how the parts work. Things went a little quiet on the build over the winter but with only a seat and brake levers and calipers to buy Seth is eager to earn some extra cash doing odd jobs around the house to pay for his parts. We try our best to teach them that you don't always get things just for being awesome kids, sometimes you have to earn the things that you want, it's an important lesson to teach early.

While we were out on an adventure last week we walked past a house and there was a BMX at the end of the drive. We were unsure whether it belonged to someone of whether it had been left there as scrap. Later on that day I drove past the house on my way to somewhere and it was still sitting there which sparked more interest. That night I went out on one of my scoots and on the way home I thought 'I wonder if it's still there?', so I took a detour and sure enough it was still sitting there. I had a quick look at the wheels and realised that it flat tyres and banged up wheels, it must have been left as scrap. So I picked it up, held it on to the scooter handle bars and carried it home (which wasn't the easiest thing to do).


As it was so dark I didn't really get to look at it properly but the following morning I went straight into the back garden to check out our find. It turned out to be an old school Diamond back and although there was minor rust and paint chipping, the frame was in pretty good condition. Seth was over the moon when he saw it and that afternoon we spent a few hours in the garden taking it apart and cleaning up the parts worth keeping. It was great to see the skills I had taught Seth being used. He used the rivet extractor to take off the chain and took the tyres off of the wheels to check for punctures. We also managed to sell a few things that we found in the shed that day to fund the project and buy new parts that we need, which was great.


We should have everything we need this week to start rebuilding the bike and I am really looking forward to getting stuck in with him. It's always great to see the end product of anything we create together but for me (and I am quite sure the boys feel the same), It is far more about the quality time spent together.


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